The Power of an Innovation Roadmap in Modern E-Discovery
By Ari Kaplan and Sarai Schubert
Ari Kaplan speaks with Sarai Schubert, the Chief Operations Officer at IPRO, an e-discovery software company.
Ari Kaplan
Tell us about your background and your role at IPRO.
Sarai Schubert
My background is very much technical, and I have been on both the tech and law sides. My focus as a leader has always been on solving problems. At IPRO, I manage the product strategy, customer success, customer support, and research and development teams. At the end of the day, my objective is to ensure that we are looking at and improving our customer outcomes through products and services that support them.
Ari Kaplan
How did your experience as the manager of practice support operations at a large firm influence the way you approach serving buyers of legal technology and services?
Sarai Schubert
When you have been a customer, with an understanding of the technology and different practices clients are navigating on a day-to-day basis, it makes a huge difference no size fits all and you often need to customize the approach. Working at a global firm requires an outside provider to recognize the privacy concerns, technical issues, and local laws in which the firm has offices, as well as which solution is best for what job. That background gave me the ability to understand what my customers, who are often partners from global law firms, need from a solutions perspective. It is critical to recognize that we are not simply supporting them on the tools. Rather, we are making sure that they achieve their ultimate outcome. We go beyond answering feature-specific question and address results.
Ari Kaplan
What is an innovation roadmap?
Sarai Schubert
Innovation disrupts the status quo and reflects a different approach. An innovation roadmap can help a team become more strategic and develop a defined strategy for driving progress, disrupting their current model, and challenging the traditions based on shifts in the market to which they need to adapt. When drafting it, one needs to study the trajectory of their market, technological advancements, and key obstacles for specific clients or industries, such as corporations, law firms, and service providers. Those operating globally or addressing increased government oversight may need to adjust their plan as well.
Ari Kaplan
How can a company tactically tailor an innovation roadmap to address its particular objectives?
Sarai Schubert
Every company is different, but teams repeatedly addressing the same challenges can leverage an innovation roadmap to redesign their processes, such as incorporating information governance improvements, developing security enhancements, changing privacy protocols. This shift does not require unified approval from key stakeholders. Rather, teams can implement each new step incrementally in subsequent matters. Given the proliferation of data, e-discovery, for example, will only become more challenging so the implementation of an innovation roadmap can provide an advantage. There is often more that an organization can do upstream that will help over the long term. That plan should focus on better technology, better ways of handling data, and better methods for achieving optimal outcomes. It must also be adaptable and annual instead of part of a five- or ten-year plan.
Ari Kaplan
Why should organizations apply an upstream approach and philosophy to their technology development?
Sarai Schubert
Organizations that only focus downstream have less familiarity with their data and
engage in a larger number of information handoffs, which can increase the risk of errors.
It is critical to improve your information governance processes because matter sizes are only growing larger, while budgets are getting smaller despite higher outside counsel costs. Early case assessment is effective and common, but it often takes place later in the data lifecycle. By the time it takes place, litigation teams have spent significant sums to process and filter their data. An upstream approach allows teams to engage in early case assessment sooner and collect information more strategically.
Ari Kaplan
What is in-place search and what does it mean for law firm and corporate legal professionals involved in litigation?
Sarai Schubert
IPRO has a tool called Live EDA to help organizations create a data lake repository without downloading different documents. It provides a single pane of glass, one repository that constantly and actively indexes data from Teams, Slack, email, SharePoint, Box, and other sources of information. Case teams no longer need to search multiple separate locations. They can search for everything thing they need in a single source at an accelerated rate for both pre-litigation discussions, preliminary case strategy, and litigation support. As a case progresses, in-place search provides a single platform within which to collaborate with outside counsel. It also allows teams to navigate new custodians and quickly focus on the most relevant information, rather than capture everything and filter out the irrelevant noise. It results in a controlled environment that permits in-house and outside counsel to collaborate earlier, more holistically, and more effectively.
Ari Kaplan
How do you see litigation evolving?
Sarai Schubert
It will continue and expand. We are super resilient in the legal industry, regardless of whether there is a recession. We are constantly generating data and will find smarter ways to manage it.
About the Author
Ari Kaplan (http://www.AriKaplanAdvisors.com) regularly interviews leaders in the legal industry and in the broader professional services community to share perspective, highlight transformative change, and introduce new technology at http://www.ReinventingProfessionals.com and his series at Legal Business World
Listen here to his conversation with Sarai Schubert.
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